The frisky felines will have to watch their backs a little more closely, though, after the Utah Wildlife Board approved a plan Thursday that will increase the number of cougar-hunting permits for the upcoming season.

There will be 790 cougar permits available across the state this coming season, compared with 726 last season. Alan Clark, wildlife section chief for the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, said the increase is due to more areas of cougar habitat now falling under the agency's Predator Management Plan, meaning more cougars will be killed to help dwindling deer herds the cats typically use for food.

The board's move to increase the permits came a couple hours after Utah State University's Michael Wolfe, a professor in the school's department of forest, range and wildlife sciences, presented a study on Utah's cougar population that, more than anything, indicated how difficult it is to know exactly how many of the cats make Utah home.

"There is no reliable method of telling you how many animals are out there on any large-scale, reliable basis," Wolfe told the board.

That uncertainty concerns some wildlife advocates, although there was little growling at the meeting as the board passed the increase in permits.

"The science on which cougar management is based . . . is about as slender and weak as it is in any area of wildlife management," said Kirk Robinson, executive director of the Salt Lake City-based Western Wildlife Conservancy. "It's just assumed that we have to manage cougars to protect deer herds."

Most of the hearing dealt with details regarding cougar-season start dates and differing types of permits, along with dwindling deer numbers that many blame, in part, on cougars.

"The drought has really impacted the deer herds here," said Nile Sorenson, wildlife manager for the DWR's Southern Region, in a statement released after the hearing. "We're not getting the annual growth on the plants the deer rely on in the winter, and we don't have the abundance of summer vegetation that many of the nursing does need to produce enough milk for their fawns. On top of that is predation by cougars."

There could be a bit less of that if the Utah Wildlife Board's increase in cougar permits pans out. Last season, hunters bagged 426 cougars in Utah, and they took 428 the year before.

The DWR is projecting that possibly 500 cougars will meet their demise this upcoming season.

nailen@sltrib.com